Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Scalise: Cold Inauguration Proves Global Warming False

Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana delivered a standard-issue speech at CPAC over the weekend, claiming that it’s “ironic” that President Obama talked about global warming in his inaugural address while wearing a trench coat because it was so cold. Anyone who makes such an argument is either a moron, a liar or both. But the audience dutifully chuckled because, well, they’re not exactly Rhodes Scholars themselves.

I bet they’re just disappointed that Obama didn’t do the same thing as President Harrison: give his inauguration address in his shirt, catch pneumonia and die.

On a more general note, I think this is one of the main distributing factors to the GOP’s inability to dig themselves out of the hole they’re currently in: they’ve shut themselves off from reality to such a degree that they don’t even realize how piss-poor their arguments are. One of their pols delivers some lame line about the snowstorms disproving global warming, marriage always having been between a man and a woman or tax hikes being senseless because ‘socialism never works’ – and a large part of the audience chuckling with delight at that ‘zinger’ that was just delivered. They really think those are good arguments. Really. ._.

By Bob Marshall, Staff writer February 21, 2013 10:54am 10 commentsTweet PRINT
Stunning new data not yet publicly released shows Louisiana losing its battle with rising seas much more quickly than even the most pessimistic studies have predicted to date.

While state officials continue to argue over restoration projects to save the state’s sinking, crumbling coast, top researchers at theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have concluded that Louisiana is in line for the highest rate of sea-level rise “on the planet.” *

NOAA’s Tim Osborn,** an 18-year veteran of Louisiana coastal surveys, and Steve Gill, senior scientist at the agency’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, spelled out the grim reality in interviews with The Lens. When new data on the rate of coastal subsidence is married with updated projections of sea-level rise, the southeast corner of Louisiana looks likely to be under at least 4.3 feet of gulf water by the end of the century.

Scalise appears to be an idiot.

1. Louisian has one of the highest sea level rises on the planet due to multiple factors.

2. This is happening right now.

3. It’s obvious enough that the state of Louisiana is spending billions of dollars to try and cope with sea level rise.

4. It’s estimated that much of the lower 1/3 of the state will be under water by 2100 unless something is done.

5. New Orleans is considered to be the first city to be lost due to global warming and sea level rise.

This is worse than fiddling while Rome burns. Scalise is babbling like an idiot while Louisiana sinks into the ocean.

There’s fiddling while Rome burns, then there’s making your career by denying that fire exists, Rome is fine, anyone who says otherwise is un-Roman. Why, just the other day I saw a building that was being built! Support our Legionnaires!

New research warns rising sea levels and changing sediment patterns have made inundation of much of the Mississippi Delta inevitable
Source: Copyright 2009, Business Green
Date: June 30, 2009
Byline: Danny Bradbury
Original URL: Status ONLINE

Researchers have concluded that large parts of the Louisiana coastline will be underwater by the end of the century, due to a combination of rising sea levels and shifting sediment levels in the Mississippi delta caused by dam construction.

The study, published yesterday in the journal Nature Geoscience, finds that the amount of sediment in the Mississippi river delta that feeds into the Gulf of Mexico has dropped by half, due in part to the construction of dams in the area. The report predicts that as water levels rise, the reduced sediment levels will be insufficient to build up the flood plain and keep it above sea level.

Authors Michael D Blum and Harry Roberts revealed that an area the size of Connecticut will be lost to the sea, and that there is little if anything to prevent the area becoming inundated.

The problem is that they’ll never agree on what counts as stupid. Joe Republican, over there by the water cooler, thinks opposing gay marriage is stupid, but agrees that all the global warming talk is just a plot to ruin capitalism. Paul Republican, the guy in the green shirt, thinks gays are icky and immoral, and trying to brainwash his kids, but thinks that there are problems with global climate change that need to be addressed. Etc., etc.

But they pretty much all agree that “the elites” are out to destroy all that is good and Exceptional in America, forcing us to march in zombie lockstep to their socialist dystopia. And those “elites” include scientists (climate scientists especially.) Scientists and latte drinkers.

I’m not sure what they call drinks made with espresso and steamed milk in the deep South, but they’re not lattes.

Consider this group: Homeowners who:
a) own their home free and clear,
b) don’t have a degree in finance, other business-related field, economics, or other fields that has them understanding probability or quantitative decision-making, and finally
c) own home insurance.

In spite of the incredibly low odds a group like this will ever suffer from damage or a liability claim that would threaten their lifestyle, we consider this sort of a hedge prudent to the point of being obvious.

Now we have the current damage we observe from climate change and the predicted outcomes climate scientists and other related scientists/experts predict. Where many of these threats come with a high degree of certainty, tight margin of error on current observations/trends/predictions and are held near-monolithically by the relevant experts. Even if someone was a skeptic, “contrarian”, or denialist regarding the cause of current damage and the damage predicted, the cost of mitigation makes such efforts a no-brainer.

Especially when the costs are ones we’ll eventually have to employ at some point anyway, and all the other benefits we get from moving towards greener energy sources. I.e., the need to act now isn’t merely a tactical obligation, but also is attractive for strategic considerations. (This is a tiny part of my argument, but it does make obstruction of mitigation efforts even more moronic.)

From this perspective, I don’t think we sufficiently appreciate the delusional idiocy of anyone who argues we should ignore the climate science community’s predictions. Even if scientists held a less certain confidence level or there wasn’t the near-monolithic position held know but instead a mix of competing findings (which there effectively isn’t). The only rational conclusion in terms of how to act is to subscribe to what scientists have concluded and develop policies consistent with what they explain will work.

So back to our homeowners. They’re smart enough to realize the importance of a hedge like home insurance. The argument to support mitigation for global warming is a convincing argument unless of course one is a misanthrope. So why isn’t everyone on-board and why is it almost exclusively U.S. conservatives who deny the history of the earth’s climate and what science understands? My conclusion is that this a very illustrative example how powerful ideologues’ delusionals can be and how easy it is to play certain groups of people raised to be submissive to the authority figures with whom they identify. There is no valid argument against mitigation, and yet the committment to fatally defective arguments on mitigation remains firmly held.

So I don’t think we fully appreciate the level of incoherency at play, even for those of us who’ve long observed religious people irrationally cling to their faith, in spite of the consequences of doing so, or creationists committed to their young earth.

The problem is that they’ll never agree on what counts as stupid. Joe Republican, over there by the water cooler, thinks opposing gay marriage is stupid, but agrees that all the global warming talk is just a plot to ruin capitalism. Paul Republican, the guy in the green shirt, thinks gays are icky and immoral, and trying to brainwash his kids, but thinks that there are problems with global climate change that need to be addressed. Etc., etc.

Paul Repbulican may concede facts about AGW, but because he’s a Republican and therefore has certain associations and media sources, doesn’t consider or can’t appreciate the implications of denying AGW when it comes to influencing his voting behavior. From this perspective he’s an effective denialist.

How much of a brain is required to distinguish between weather changing and climate changing? Or did we just have some pretty cold climate last night? And if there’s no climate change one would expect NYC to be under a kilometer or so of ice……..

@ Michael Heath: I don’t think that insurance is quite as good an analogy. What percentage of homeowners and drivers would go without insurance if they could. Homeowner’s insurance is necessary to get a mortgage above a certain percentage of the house’s value and auto insurance is just another nanny state obligation that you have to =have in order to drive, and now health insurance is another instance of governmental tyranny – according to a common libertarian perspective. Getting insurance is just a necessary hassle that any good bulletproof libertarian loathes and ignores whenever possible [unless they’re selling it]. After all, bad things won’t happen to me. Or, if they do, I’ll be rich enough to easily meliorate the situation.
The same situation occurs with global warming. first of all, it won’t happen to me because God won’t pull that shit on such an exalted specimen of humanity as me, or it gets in the way of making a [dis]honest gazillion samoleons. Or, if it does happen, I’ll have my Gulf Coast property in Dallas and still get to occasionally ski in Vail.

Over on this side of the pond, we’ve been having snowfall in what would normally be the beginning of Spring. I’ve seen a few comments from climate change deniers about how this ‘proves’ global warming to be a hoax, until I point out that the reason there’s so much snow is that global warming means the Gulfstream isn’t as strong or reliable as it used to be – and the Gulfstream is what normally keeps the local UK weather as temperate as it usually is, and, as such, this lowering of the temperature of northern Europe had been hypothesised by some climate scientists for at least the last 10 years, possibly longer.

I don’t think that insurance is quite as good an analogy. What percentage of homeowners and drivers would go without insurance if they could. Homeowner’s insurance is necessary to get a mortgage above a certain percentage of the house’s value and auto insurance is just another nanny state obligation that you have to =have in order to drive, and now health insurance is another instance of governmental tyranny – according to a common libertarian perspective.

I think it’s a near perfect analogy, otherwise I wouldn’t have used it; particularly because the demographic who choose to purchase home insurance are largely the population who either deny climate change or don’t consider it when voting.

You also need to read my post @ 13 far more carefully, I specifically noted the group I was profiling owned their homes, “free and clear” and still purchase home insurance. That’s was characteristic “a” in my profile @ 13. The analogy doesn’t even make sense if I chose a group forced to purchase home insurance by way of a mortgage or land contract lien on their property.

I have no idea why you projected auto insurance onto my analogy. I certainly didn’t use it.

I would appreciate your responding to what I actually wrote in my post @ 13, rather than an analogy that I did not use. And as a Realtor, nearly all the older people I work with on sales and purchases have no liens on the property the seek to sell, they own them free and clear or if they’re buyers, are paying cash and yet still solicit my advice on where to purchase home insurance.

and we had a tornado down under this week. We get the odd water spout, and maybe a tiny tornado like thing, but I honestly can’t recall anything with the kind of destructive power we saw this week. The aforementioned Mr Abbot was silent about it (though to be honest, with this week in politics, he didn’t need to say much to go up in the polls).

…until I point out that the reason there’s so much snow is that global warming means the Gulfstream isn’t as strong or reliable as it used to be – and the Gulfstream is what normally keeps the local UK weather as temperate as it usually is, and, as such, this lowering of the temperature of northern Europe had been hypothesised by some climate scientists for at least the last 10 years, possibly longer.

Yeah, except that this idea is long disproved bullshit.

The Gulf Stream-European climate myth
The panic is based on a long held belief of the British, other Europeans, Americans and, indeed, much of the world’s population that the northward heat transport by the Gulf Stream is the reason why western Europe enjoys a mild climate, much milder than, say, that of eastern North America. This idea was actually originated by an American military man, Matthew Fontaine Maury, in the mid nineteenth century and has stuck since despite the absence of proof.

It would appear that Prof. Seager’s ideas have not, at the present time, received widespread support in the oceanographic community so Sir Lancelot’s ukase that the Gulf Stream European climate theory has, been discredited is to say the least, rather premature. I notice, however, that Sir Lancelot didn’t address the claims of rising water levels in the Gulf of Mexico, which was the subject of the blog post.

It is noteworthy that there were only 4 citations in Prof. Seager’s paper, all to papers authored or co-authored by him. In the scientific community, that’s not a sign which gives the reader great confidence in his conclusions.

I would note, by the way, that a similar theory has long been proposed for the West Coast of the US where I hale from. On the West Coast, it’s known as the Japanese current. Temperatures in Winter along that coast are considerably higher then East coast locations at the same latitude and water temperatures are also much higher (it is to be noted that they are much lower in Summer). I lived 4.5 years in Berkeley as an undergraduate and never saw a snow flake. In fact, the low temperature only got below 32 degrees on a couple of occasions, causing the populace to scurry off to buy antifreeze. Water temperatures off Ocean City in January average about 34 degrees, compared with water temperatures of 45 degrees off San Francisco, at about the same latitude. Interestingly enough, in August, water temperatures off San Francisco average about 60 degrees while off Ocean City, they are in the mid seventies). One has to get down around San Diego to get water temperatures approaching 70 degrees in August.

A new study shows that global warming is slowing the flow of the Gulf Stream, which will trigger sea level rise along … Published: February 12th, 2013 … edges aren’t quite as low — again, evidence that the stream itself is starting to slow down.

It does appear that the Gulf stream is slowing down.

This is one of the contributors to the sea level rise on the US East coast.

It might make northern Europe colder since the Gulf stream is about the only thing making it habitable. Or not. While it is slowing down, it is also…getting warmer.

Nope, it’s not. Technically, I shouldn’t really have said this, as, in my understanding, it’s really still just a hypothesis, at this point, but it is one that has yet to be disproved, and it simply makes sense that global warming will have an impact on ocean currents, which are widely accepted as being factors, to a greater or lesser degree, in the various local climates of various regions around the world. The UK, being an island nation, would be one of those regions.

To address your link, if I’m reading this guy’s papers correctly, what this guy’s models seem to show is that the effect of the Gulf Stream slowing down is and will be more modest than some predicted, not that there is and will be no effect. Considering that the most dramatic predictions were of things like huge icebergs floating along the English Channel, if not it freezing over completely, and ice sheets marching down from the pole to cover northern Europe, this does not mean this more modest effect is not sufficient to have an impact on the weather – such as having snowfall in spring. And that’s leaving aside the point that slc1 brought up in #26.

Returning to the Louisiana coastal issue, the major portion of the projected “sea level rise” is from subsidence of the river delta. So the rise of the level of the Gulf is less than one third of the projected problem.

Also seas have been rising, at a rate very similar to that of the last 100 years, for many centuries. Since the beginning of the current interglacial period.

Since there is nothing particularly unusual about the recent cool and snowy conditions in the UK (at least historically speaking) wouldn’t it be more prudent to assume that nothing “unnatural” were going on, rather than appealing to fanciful ideas about human activity altering the Gulf Stream?

Returning to the Louisiana coastal issue, the major portion of the projected “sea level rise” is from subsidence of the river delta. So the rise of the level of the Gulf is less than one third of the projected problem.

As usual, Sir Lancelot makes a claim sans citation. I’m not even sure what his claim is. Is it that the Louisiana coast is sinking or that deposits of sediment from the Mississippi is causing the water level in the Gulf of Mexico to rise?